Raven (comics)
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Template:Superherobox Raven is a fictional character, a superhero in the DC Comics universe, specifically the Teen Titans comics.
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In the Teen Titans comics
Raven has been a prominent member of the The New Teen Titans, and is currently a member of the modern Teen Titans. She possesses psychic and telekinetic powers and the ability to heal wounds. She is also portrayed as an empath of some type.
A dark, moody character, Raven is the halfbreed daughter of a human mother named Angela (Arella) Roth and the demon overlord Trigon. She grew up in a pacifist place called Azarath, where she was taught to "control her emotions" in order to suppress and control Trigon's demonic powers that she was born with.
Eventually she learned that Trigon was planning to come to her dimension and vowed to stop him. She initially approached the Justice League, but they refused her on the advice of Zatanna who sensed her demonic parentage. In desperation, she reformed the Titans as the New Teen Titans to fight her father.
The team was eventually able to defeat Trigon and seal him in an interdimensional prison. However, Raven still had to fight her father's influence, as he was not completely destroyed. Trigon eventually escaped and came to Earth and took control of Raven. Azarath was destroyed in the process. The Titans came together and killed Raven. This allowed the souls of Azarath to possess her and use her as a channel to kill Trigon. Afterwards, Raven was presumed dead, but she actually rose from ashes of the battle, finally purged of Trigon's evil. She vanished, and her mother went looking for her.
Raven was then captured by Brother Blood's minions to control Nightwing as part of Brother Blood's resurrection. The Titans rescued them both and prevented Brother Blood from returning. Raven donned a new white cloak to represent her being free from her father's influence.
The Titans were eventually captured by the Wildebeest Society, but were rescued by a group of heroes. The leader of the Wildebeest Society was actually their teammate, Jericho, who was inhabited by the souls of Azarath. Jericho tried to use the Titans as vessels for the souls, but in the end was killed by his father, Deathstroke.
Later, another version of Raven appeared, this time, possessed by her evil conscience. She attempted to implant seeds of Trigon's children into new bodies. She crashed the wedding of Nightwing and Starfire, and implanted one of the seeds into her. However, she actually implanted the seed of the good Raven, which caused Starfire to leave Earth in order to escape from Raven. Raven then implanted seeds into several female superheroes. The Titans were able to defeat her with the help of the Phantasm.
Raven returned later, still evil, in order to destroy her good self which she had implanted in Starfire. The Titans defeated her once again, for the last time. The good Raven was instilled into a new golden spirit body.
As a spirit, Raven wandered Earth, looking for her place in the world, when Brother Blood came to claim her. Her spirit was instilled into the body of a teenage girl by the Church of Blood. The Teen Titans (reformed again), discovered that the Church of Blood were worshippers of Raven's father, Trigon. They also found a prophecy which told of the marriage between Brother Blood and Raven that would result in armageddon. The new team interrupted the wedding, and Raven forced the cult to escape. She then joined the new Teen Titans and enrolled at a high school as Rachel Roth to honor her mother.
In the Teen Titans animated series
In the Teen Titans animated series (2003-), Raven appears much younger (as do all the other characters) than in the comic book variants, though her costume is relatively unchanged. Raven's personality is also more child-like and emotional and slightly more stereotypically gothic. Raven is straightforward, moody, as well as sarcastic. However, she does show signs that she cares very much for her friends.
Her powers keep close to the original character's powers, except for the fact that she has to say "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" to help her focus her powers. She has to meditate often to make sure her powers remain at bay. When she gets excessively emotional, her powers tend to take a form, called her "Soul Self" in the comic books (Her soul self is not recognized by name in the animation, but it is featured.) Her soul-self tends to take the form of demonic under-the-bed sort of creatures, like pitch black four-eyed baby birds or rats, or obviously, a giant raven. Her soul-self can also transform her body's appearance to a variety of demonic forms and sizes. Worst of all, when she can't control her anger, she transforms into a demonic Raven usually with four glowing-red eyes and sprouting black tentacles from under her cloak, also referred to by fans as “Red Raven”. The four eyes seem to symbolize her demon father, Trigon.
Raven often has a complex that her fellow Titans don't like her, possibly because she's the daughter of a demon and has a very unique and complex lifestyle that her friends don't understand too well. Her room inside Titans Tower is decorated with things from her past, as well as statues and pictures about of the creepy-crawlies her powers like to conjure up. Not surprisingly, she becomes mortally offended when anyone steps foot in it.
Several episodes in the series are specifically dedicated to this character, though other characters have also had episodes specific to them. The animated series is not believed to be as focused on Raven as critical to the beginning and ending plot of the series, unlike the comic books. The producers claim the animated series will not end with Raven’s confrontation with her father as the climax of the series, as it was in most of the comic variants.
In the first season, episode 5 “Nevermore”: Raven is angered by a villain named Dr. Light and transforms into Red Raven, grabs the villain with her tentacles and drags him under her cloak, seriously traumatizing the villain. Later Beast Boy and Cyborg find a mirror in her room, which accidentally transports them into her subconscious. Here, they discover that Raven has a slight case of multiple personality disorder(each personality represented as wearing a different colored robe, including Green (bold), Gray (timidity), Pink (cheeriness), Orange (uncouth), etc.). When they find the real Raven, she tells them that Red (anger) was let out by accident. When Red Raven (complete with four glowing-red eyes) transforms into a huge hulking beast, questions about what’s going on occur and Raven comments "Let's just say I have issues with my father," a hint in the animated series that the beast is a incarnation of her father, and referring to a background story based off her comic book variant. Another color, the white cloak, is seen in several episodes. In "Nevermore", her cloak turns white after she melds her emotions (save anger) together to defeat her mind's view of Trigon. The white cloak was seen again in "Spellbound" as a result of her being attracted to Malchior. After the episode, “Red Raven” was let loose briefly during Raven's battle with Terra in a giant mud pit (Season 2, Episode 25 “Aftershock [Part 1]”). After her furious personality was unleashed, she could have easily killed Terra if she hadn't remained calm and restrained herself.
Possibly the most powerhouse episode of all (at present) was "Birthmark" in season 4 where the plot moves on to Slade, and how he has apparently made allegiance with Trigon (or even resurrected by Trigon, though in the comics Slade was immortal). This episode also ties Robin and Raven together, (Not much done before, because the choice was always to band Robin and Starfire) giving the viewers a hint of how they alone will seemingly understand each other because of their dark pasts, and how Robin will be the only one to help in Raven's eternal fight with her father.
Many fans of the comic books question how deeply Raven’s upcoming plot with her father will enter into the demonic, apocalyptic and mortality, mainly because of the show's more child oriented style. Based off brief descriptions of future episodes on the net it may not be expected that Raven’s possession and battles with her father will lead to her inevitable death (or repeated deaths and reincarnations) as in the comic series. In most recent episodes though Raven’s apocalyptic destruction of the earth and battles with her father seem inevitable, though the show reveals as few clues as possible, the hints seems horrific enough to sit well with many comic book fans of the series.
Other Ravens in comics
The Raven, real name Tony Grey, first appeared in Feature Comics #60, a series that was published by Quality Comics in the 1940s. The Raven wore a bird-shaped costume and could fly. He was the partner and romantic interest of Spider Widow.
References
- TitansTower.com entry on Raven (http://titanstower.com/source/whoswho/raven.html)
- Overview of Raven (http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/raven.html)
- Overview of teen titan comics (http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/titans.html#teen)
External links
- Raven's description on the animated series (http://www.titanstower.com/source/animated/charraven.html)